The Agitator

I don’t know what set him off, but marketing maven Seth Godin recently posted an article titled Magic beans, TV and the web. Here’s the kernel: "On the web, there are countless marketers just standing around waiting for someone to hand them the magic beans. And that’s the ...  Read more

Last week, I applauded blogger Jeff Brooks, who was critical of Charity Navigator for casting aspersions on direct mail fundraising … specifically for buying into the "myth that fundraising is a form of harassment." I stand by that. But I do accept that most direct response ...  Read more

To every fad there is a season … churn, churn, churn! Marketing maven Seth Godin seems to think Twitter has a short shelf life, citing this report from Nielsen Online that the churn rate on the service is 60% … as in, six-in-ten Twitter users in a given month fail to return the ...  Read more

You need to make a critical decision. When do you have "enough" information? When have you thought about it "enough?" Marketing maven Seth Godin addresses this issue wisely and succinctly as follows: "First rule of decision making: More time does not create better ...  Read more

In a recent blog post, marketing maven Seth Godin predicted that 90% of sales will come from word of mouth or digital promotion by 2011. He asked: "How do you change what you’re doing today to be ready for that?" Think about it … can you imagine that 90% of your ...  Read more

Last week, talking about FaceBook’s cave-in (as some pundits see it) to two million of its users, I raised the issue of when should nonprofits listen to their donors. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but Jeff Brooks over at donor-centric Donor Power Blog would probably say ...  Read more

So, you go do this fancy survey of your donors and they say: 1) Scrap the newsletter, and 2) by the way, we don’t understand why you’re spending 80% of "our" money on program X … cut it in half. Do you listen to your donors (i.e., customers) and do what they say? If ...  Read more

G’won, admit it … you google your name every now and then! And what "personal brand" emerges? In this article from Online Spin, Max Kalehoff of search marketing firm Clickable advises that folks who want to stand out and get ahead had better put some serious thought to their ...  Read more

The Agitator’s Week In Review. It’s countdown time. 72 hours ’til Election Day. 1,464 hours ’til the account books close on December 31. And while the pollsters (or at least most of them) are predicting an Obama victory it’s not nearly as clear how fundraisers will ...  Read more

Here is a fundraising “manifesto” brought to our attention by marketing maven Seth Godin.Called In Defense of Raising Money, it’s written by Sasha Dichter, Director of Business Development for the Acumen Fund, one of the more innovative social investment vehicles — a ...  Read more